Indeed in its two decades of operation the court has mounted investigations in 25 countries, 12 have been African.

Some political leaders have threatened to withdraw from the court: Burundi - the first and so far only to officially start the process of withdrawing - accused the court of being “a political instrument and weapon used by the west to enslave other states”.

majority of African countries under current investigation (DRC, Uganda, Mali, CAR I, and CAR II) have arisen from self-referrals.

those exposed to political violence are much less likely to hold negative attitudes about the ICC.

first two decades, the ICC engaged in selective justice, infringing on sovereignty in post-colonial states

Some experts counter that the ICC simply opened investigations in the situations of gravest concern, where the most people died in atrocities.

This post thus sets out to address questions of the Court’s internal workings, practices and culture.

OTP

questions of strategy and management

in 20 years and almost two complete prosecutorial terms, the Court that ostensibly exists to fight impunity and prosecute those most responsible for the crimes of greatest concern to the international community has managed only three convictions for core international crimes.

one was a guilty plea (Al Mahdi), one controversially involved the Court’s judges saving a collapsing case by recharacterizing the mode of liability after the presentation of argument and evidence had concluded and without hearing further argument on point (Katanga), and one took six years to result in a single conviction for the recruitment of child soldiers (Lubanga).

The OTP appears unable to consistently mount successful and convincing cases.

In a statement of support of thePage 478president's revocation, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken condemned Trump's order as 'inappropriate and ineffective', but went on to emphasize that the United States continues 'to disagree strongly with the ICC's actions relating to the Afghanistan and Palestinian situations' and reasserted the United States' 'longstanding objection to the Court's efforts to assert jurisdiction over personnel of non-States Parties such as the United States and Israel'.3

nation's commitment of money, prestige, expertise and logistics toward the creation and running of international criminal courts.

in 1998 the US was one of only seven countries – along with China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar, and Yemen – that voted against the Rome Statute.

George W. Bush administration led a hostile campaign against the court

US did not veto a UN Security Council request to the ICC prosecutor to investigate crimes in Darfur, Sudan in 2005 and it voted for the UN Security Council referral of the situation in Libya to the court in 2011.

While the ICC was officially established in 2002, it was not the first tribunal of its kind. The first international tribunal was set up to bring Nazi officials to justice in the the post-WWII Nuremberg Trials. [5] Then, in the 1990s, the UN held two ad hoc tribunals in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)  sought to prosecute crimes that occurred during the Yugoslav Wars, indicting a total of one hundred and sixty-one persons for violating customs of war, genocide, and crimes against humanity. [6] Lasting from 1933 to 2017, the ICTY helped set the precedent for holding perpetrators of wartime atrocities accountable. Indeed, the creation of the tribunal itself was catalyzed by pressure from the international public and it was unanimously called to order by the UNSC. [7] During the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which lasted from 1994 to 2014, ninety-three individuals were indicted for genocide and other violations of international humanitarian law. It was the first tribunal to deliver verdicts for genocide and to define and recognize rape as a means of perpetrating genocide.

After [nearly] 20 years, and 1.5 billion Euros spent we have only three core crime convictions.

“it is undeniable that the Rome project still falls short of the expectations of the participants at that ground-breaking conference in Rome”

. There have been eight convictions, one overturned on appeal, one arising from a guilty plea and four relating to Article 70 administration of justice offences.

questioning that it took the ICC 16 years to convict less than ten suspects.

he global legitimacy and the normative effect of the Rome Statute correlate positively with the number of ICC member States.

The more States willing to assist the Court, the more effective it could become, for example, in the process of obtaining evidence or arresting suspects.